The magnitude of decadal and multidecadal variability in North American precipitation.

Abstract The authors use singular spectrum analysis to investigate the relative magnitude of decadal to multidecadal (D2M) variability in annual and seasonal precipitation anomalies across North America. In most places, decadal (10–20 yr) or multidecadal (20–50 yr) variability makes up less than 10% of the total variance in either annual or seasonal precipitation, with interannual variability or secular trends having much greater importance. Decadal variability is most prominent (contributing 25%–30% of the total variance) in Minnesota and northern California during winter, and the central Rocky Mountains in autumn. Eastern Quebec is the only major region where precipitation exhibits significant variance in the multidecadal band. Precipitation across much of Canada exhibits significant variance at extremely low frequencies (greater than 50 yr), but variability at these time scales cannot be separated from secular trends because of the limited length of instrumental climate records. Decadal signals in the ...

[1]  Multidecadal climate variability of global lands and oceans , 2006 .

[2]  P. Jones,et al.  Representing Twentieth-Century Space-Time Climate Variability. Part II: Development of 1901-96 Monthly Grids of Terrestrial Surface Climate , 2000 .

[3]  J. Betancourt,et al.  Patterns and sources of multidecadal oscillations in drought‐sensitive tree‐ring records from the central and southern Rocky Mountains , 2003 .

[4]  Hugo G. Hidalgo,et al.  Climate precursors of multidecadal drought variability in the western United States , 2004 .

[5]  Michael Ghil,et al.  ADVANCED SPECTRAL METHODS FOR CLIMATIC TIME SERIES , 2002 .

[6]  N. Mantua,et al.  The Pacific Decadal Oscillation , 2002 .

[7]  R. Vautard,et al.  Singular spectrum analysis in nonlinear dynamics, with applications to paleoclimatic time series , 1989 .

[8]  N. Graham,et al.  Decadal Variability of Precipitation over Western North America , 1998 .

[9]  R. Sutton,et al.  Atlantic Ocean Forcing of Multidecadal Variations in North American and European Summer Climate , 2005 .

[10]  Xuebin Zhang,et al.  Temperature and precipitation trends in Canada during the 20th century , 2000, Data, Models and Analysis.

[11]  R. Sutton,et al.  Atlantic Ocean Forcing of North American and European Summer Climate , 2005, Science.

[12]  D. Thomson,et al.  Spectrum estimation and harmonic analysis , 1982, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[13]  Jonathan M. Lees,et al.  Robust estimation of background noise and signal detection in climatic time series , 1996 .

[14]  Michael A. Palecki,et al.  Pacific and Atlantic Ocean influences on multidecadal drought frequency in the United States , 2004, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[15]  M. Dettinger,et al.  Climate and floods still govern California levee breaks , 2007 .

[16]  Michael E. Mann,et al.  Oscillatory Spatiotemporal Signal Detection in Climate Studies: A Multiple-Taper Spectral Domain Approach , 1999 .

[17]  P. Jones,et al.  Representing Twentieth-Century Space–Time Climate Variability. Part I: Development of a 1961–90 Mean Monthly Terrestrial Climatology , 1999 .

[18]  Alberto M. Mestas-Nuñez,et al.  The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and its relation to rainfall and river flows in the continental U.S. , 2001 .

[19]  S. Schubert,et al.  Potential Predictability of Long-Term Drought and Pluvial Conditions in the U.S. Great Plains , 2008 .

[20]  T. D. Mitchell,et al.  An improved method of constructing a database of monthly climate observations and associated high‐resolution grids , 2005 .